The Lightning Thief

On a total whim a few weeks back, I picked up a copy of The Lightning Thief, the first book in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. I think I may have seen copies of these books in the past but overlooked them. But since I had heard that it had been made into a movie, I thought I'd check it out. Yes, I know, that's a lousy reason to read a book. Sue me.

Anyway, the story revolves around the aforementioned Percy Jackson. He's had a pretty rotten childhood. His mother has married an absolute loser and Percy has been bouncing around from school to school. He suffers from ADHD and dyslexia. Things are not going well for him at all.

And then, one day, his math teacher tries to kill him on a field trip. It's only when his Latin teacher tosses him a pen that turns into a sword that Percy is able to defeat her. Only he seems to be the only one who remembers that it happened.

Soon Percy finds himself embroiled in a fight for survival because of who his true father is, namely one of the Olympian gods (I won't say which one, but if you've seen the TV commercials, it's not much of a spoiler). Someone has stolen Zeus's master lightning bolt and everyone seems to think it's Percy.

Now Percy has to find what was stolen and clear his name before a cosmic battle unlike anything anyone has ever seen overtakes the world. And he only has about ten days to do it.

I'm not sure I really liked this book. In terms of craft, much of it is kind of cliched and overly predictable. For example, Ares as a biker. I suppose that's clever if a bit spot on. It might have been more interesting make him, oh, maybe a corporate shark. Maybe the problem is I'm three times the age of the target market. I don't know. But I had most of the plot figured out about halfway through, which made it annoying since it seemed like none of the characters had any of it figured out until the very end.

Don't get me wrong, there's lots of adventure and action, plus some laugh out loud moments. I suspect that teens and tweens would probably get a kick out of Percy's smart-talking ways and attitude.

What bothered me most was the spiritual aspect of the book, which might seem a little weird since in general, I didn't have a problem with the Harry Potter books. But we see kids offering burnt offerings and praying to the Greek gods, plus a few somewhat overt swipes at Christianity (or at least, I thought they were swipes; maybe I'm overreacting). All told, it left me a bit unsettled.

Apparently there are four more books in this series and, as of right now, I'm thinking I'll pass. If I do indulge my curiosity, it'd be via the library.

Sea Serpent Caught on Camera

Well, not really. But still, the fact that a crew caught an oarfish on video is still pretty cool.

The Restorer Revisited

A few months back, I received word that Sharon Hinck's fabulous The Sword of Lyric series was going out of print. That's a true shame. But one of the things Sharon asked her Facebook friends was what their favorite Restorer moments were. I have to admit, I didn't answer at the time because a lot of time had passed and I couldn't remember for sure. So I resolved to re-read the series.

It took me a while to get to it. Lots of good books (and several not-so-good books) got in the way. I finally had to pull them out of the shelf and put them in my "to be read" pile. Over the past week or so, I've gone back to the People of the Verses and relived some great adventures.

The three books are The Restorer, The Restorer's Son, and The Restorer's Journey. In the first book, Susan Mitchell, an "average" mom of four gets pulled through a portal into another universe. Before she can even get her bearings, she's caught up in a frantic struggle for survival. She's among the People of the Verses, a confederacy of clans who share a common faith in the One. But now the People are in danger, both from enemies within and without.

To make things even worse, Susan just might be a Restorer. These individuals are called by the One in times of great need to turn the hearts of the People back to the Verses and to offer them the help that they need. They heal rapidly. They have heightened senses. They are given great strength and fortitude (and other gifts, but that comes into play later). If Susan is a Restorer, then she's in a lot of trouble because she'll be facing a lot of enemies, all of whom want her dead.

I'm not sure what I can say about the other two books without giving away major spoilers. So, I guess, you've been warned. Abandon all hope, ye who have not read these books. I won't give away everything, but if I'm going to share my favorite moments.

Out of the three books, I think The Restorer's Son is my favorite. I like the main character and his story arc. I especially like . . . well, shoot, I'm not sure how I can explain this. Let's put it this way: I really like the scene that's depicted on the front cover. If you've read the book, you should know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, well . . . too bad. Go read it.


But in terms of other favorite scenes, I'd have to say I like Susan's whole story arc in the third book. Sharon puts Susan in a very dark place and the way she comes out is inspiring.

That's perhaps one of the reasons why I enjoy Sharon's books so much. There are a lot of adventure in them, lots of great emotions, but Sharon always manages to sneak in at least one or two really profound spiritual lessons, much deeper than a simple "God loves you!" or something to that effect. In many ways, Sharon's books seem to be geared for more mature Christians, aimed for those who have been walking the walk for a while and now need a nudge to keep them going in the right direction.

If you want to learn more, I did an interview with Sharon . . . holy cow! Three years ago? Well, I suppose. Anyway, it's divided up into three parts and can be found here, here, and here.

It's a real shame that these books are going out of print. So if you want a copy of them, better go get them quick. And no, you can't have mine. Just saying.

Wordcount Wednesday

Two weeks ago, I jokingly wished that I could double my wordcount every week. I never actually thought that I'd be able to do it. But somehow, I managed to do just that.

As of right now, Failstate has grown to 20,907 words, which means that over the course of the past week, I somehow managed to write 9,316 words. That's really not too shabby. I doubt I'll be able to maintain my velocity, especially since next week is Ash Wednesday and that means a lot more work and a lot less caffeine for yours truly.

But once again, I had a weird revelation about my book, one that I thought I'd share.

Earlier this week, I was slaving away on a scene and I was having a rough time with it. As a matter of fact, Failstate has been kind of a slog so far. I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but it seemed like each page was an intense labor, like I had to force myself to keep writing. I wasn't all that happy with the way things were turning out.

So I'm working on this scene, sweating each word, sure that I'm producing garbage (you know, the usual writer lament). And I got interrupted. I had to leave the computer and go do something, I don't remember what. When I came back, suddenly the words started flowing easily. I felt lighter.

It took me three sentences before I realized I had accidentally switched perspectives.

See, I had started writing the book in third person. When I started, I thought that would be good. It would allow me to "head hop" if I needed to. But this past week, I accidentally started writing in first person and it seemed to flow a lot better. It felt more natural. It felt fun.

I gave it some thought. I'm pretty sure I won't be "head hopping" after all. The whole story can be told from Failstate's perspective. So I decided I would write a chapter or two in first person and see what happened.

Well, I guess we can see what happened. I've racked up my highest wordcount on this project to date and things are falling into place.

The downside to all of this is that I'll have to majorly rework the first fifty pages or so, but hey, that's what the rewriting process is all about, right?

Now I have another week to go before Lent is upon us. I doubt I'll do as good as I did this week, but it does give me an impressive standard to shoot for, right?

A Request for Help

They say when you find out you're going to be a father, your entire life changes. And from my experience, that's certainly true. But my experience was a little different than most. I was actually holding my son when I found out I'd be his father.

One of the greatest experiences I've had is becoming an adoptive father. A little over three years ago, Jill and I worked with Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota and, after a surprisingly short but wild ride, we met Isaiah's birthmother. Isaiah was four months old at the time.

This past summer, Jill and I started working with LSS again to start the process for our second adoption. We are home study approved and we're looking for your help. We're hoping to adopt a second child, ideally infant up through six months. We are more than willing to have an open relationship with the birthparents as we've stayed in contact with Isaiah's birthmother and have really enjoyed that.

If you know of a woman who is thinking about placing their baby for adoption, please let us know. You can contact us via e-mail at johnorjill (at) live (dot) com (replacing the items in parentheses with the appropriate symbols) and we can pass along more information.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Worcount Wednesday

I should have done much better than I did this week.

Stats first: as of right now, Failstate is 11,591 words long. I hadn't even realized I cracked the 10,000 word barrier. That actually has me worried; I was hoping to keep this one on the shorter side but that doesn't appear like it'll happen. We'll have to see.

But I'm afraid I must confess something now. I broke one of my cardinal rules of writing a book.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

One of the rules I've found really helps is that of no back-editing. In other words, once forward momentum has been established, I do not go back to fix anything in what has already been written unless I wrote it that day. So let me give you an example. Earlier today I realized that I should rework the first scene in the first chapter so I can introduce some important plot elements from the get-go. I have a pretty clear idea of how to do it too.

But if I go back to fix up that scene, that means I won't be making forward progress on the story itself. My forward momentum will grind to a halt, which will make it all the harder to get started once the back-editing is done. So I've made a note of what needs to be done and I've kept writing.

This system works pretty well. It keeps me going, working through the story. It doesn't let me get bogged down in little nit-picky stuff in a first draft but instead lets me focus on telling the story as a whole. And normally, I'm happy as a clam with this rule.

Normally.

Only I hit a snag this week. I found myself slogging away through two chapters that really weren't working for me. Oh, the scenes were necessary. Some important stuff was happening. But it didn't feel right. The 2,700 odd words I pieced together just stared at me on the computer screen and I could feel their wrongness seeping into me.

I was ready to move on when, in a flash of inspiration, I realized what the problem was. Two characters had to be merged, which would require an extensive re-write of their chapter. The setting and manner of the next chapter was completely and utterly wrong. In essence, both chapters would have to be thrown out and rebuilt from the ground up.

I should have probably just taken my notes and kept going. But instead, I back-edited. I tossed out the first draft and rewrote both chapters, which actually turned out to be three chapters that came to approximately 4,200 words.

I feel much better about what I've written, but I back-edited. That was forward momentum that could have propelled me deeper into the story.

In the end, I suppose it was right for me to throw the rule book out this time. But I think I'll need to keep a sharper eye on what I'm doing. I would hate to have to do that again.

Oh, and come back tomorrow. I'll have something much more serious to talk about.

Puts It All in Perspective, Doesn't It?

First, watch this:



Now read this.

Whoa.

Seven Deadly Sins

The idea of the Seven Deadly Sins is nothing new. From what I understand, the Vatican released an updated list a few years ago, but you can't go wrong with the original seven. Wait. That came out wrong...

It's not the new list that Dan Boone wrote about in his book, but he treats each sin in a separate chapter and pulls back the mask to show how each of the seven lurk within modern Christianity.

On the plus side, this is a fast read. I polished it off in a few hours. Boone's writing style is very conversational, accessible. You don't have to be a theologian to appreciate his thoughts on each of the seven.

This is a great book for "afflicting the comfortable." There were many times that I was squirming in my chair as Boone's text held up a mirror to my life and showed me where the sins were hiding. But it's not so great at "comforting the afflicted." Boone seems very interested in drawing bright red circles around the the sins themselves but then moves on almost immediately to the next one without any real Gospel.

Also odd is the fact that Boone mentions that there are certain animals associated with each of the sins. I had never heard that before and wanted more info, but he never really developed the connection. For example, why is a frog associated with greed? Or why is a cow associated with lust? I'd think a rabbit would be better there, Playboy or otherwise.

All in all, it was an interesting read. I'm thinking it might just have to serve as the basis for a sermon series at some point (not that I'd read the book; I'd develop my own series based around the seven). But not this year.

R.I.P. Dollhouse

The good always die young. Wow. What a series finale!

Dollhouse ended tonight and I'm pretty upset about it. This was a phenomenal show almost from the beginning (almost). The premise was great, what with the imprinting of entire personalities that have been cobbled together from bits and pieces of other people. How would such technology impact the world? Here's a hint: not very well.

Sadly, both seasons of the show suffered from the same sloppy structure. Both seasons started with "engagement of the week" episodes, stand-alone stories that really didn't contribute much to the overall storyline. Then, halfway through each, the show delved into the deeper mythology of the Rossum Corporation and their nefarious designs for humanity. It's unfortunate that they (either the writers or the network) chose to do it that way. Rather than draw in viewers, I think the relatively lackluster stories drove them away.

For those of us who stuck around, though, Man on the Street in Season One and Belonging in Season Two were game-changers, dropping us head-first into a twisted story that was so engaging because it was so frighteningly possible. I'm not talking about the tech. I have no idea if you can imprint total personalities over someone or not. But the way Rossum used the tech is completely believable. Joss Whedon has a dim view of humanity's ability to resist such seductive power. I share it.

But let's talk about some of the twists, such as who the head of Rossum was or who died in the finale tonight. No worries, no spoilers, but wow. No sentimentality for anyone.

There was one thing that bothers me about the way everything played out. It would appear that the writers ret-conned the way Caroline became Echo. In the Season One episode Echoes, it would appear Caroline became Echo after a weird YouTube animal rights plot. In the Season Two episode Getting Closer, Caroline is a crusading terrorist out to topple Rossum for what they're going to do to people. In both episodes, each plot seemed to be her entrance into the Dollhouse. A contradiction? I have no idea.

It's a shame that this is over. I think they could have kept going and it would have been a wild ride along the way.

So what's next for Joss Whedon? I'm hoping for Dr. Horrible 2. But that's just me. I do know I'll be mourning Dollhouse's demise for a while. Too soon, too soon.

Behind the Mask

So it's early 1996. I'm a college senior and it's Monday night. I've got nowhere to be and I'm a bit bored, so I'm flipping channels when I stumble across a professional wrestling show. Much to my surprise, I see that Hulk Hogan is wrestling.

My immediate thought is, Hulk Hogan is still wrestling?!?

The show ended on a cliffhanger and it intrigued me enough to tune in the next week to see what happened. Before I knew it, I was watching WCW Monday Nitro regularly, but not because of Hulk Hogan.

No, I was watching because of Rey Mysterio, Jr.

He's called the human highlight reel for a reason. He was incredible. This was back when he was in his early twenties and in great shape, doing all sorts of crazy aerial moves. I still remember the moment I became his fan. He was wrestling someone and his opponent went for a clothesline. Rey grabbed his opponent's outstretched arm and used it almost like a trapeze, swinging himself around his opponent's body so he could get his legs around his opponent's neck, which led to a head-scissors takedown.

This whole series of events took exactly half a second, if I recall correctly, so fast that I could barely have blinked.

I've followed Rey's career off and on since then. I was thrilled when he came to the WWE. I was psyched that he won the World Heavyweight Championship. So naturally, I was stoked to read Behind the Mask, Rey's autobiography.

I'm not so excited anymore.

To put it bluntly, this was something of a boring read. I did learn a bit about lucha libre and the culture of Mexican wrestling, which was cool. I learned about how Rey trained with his uncle, the original Rey Mysterio, how he broke into the business way earlier than most would (if I recall correctly, it was when he was fourteen).

But as the book dragged on, I got more and more frustrated. I've read other wrestling autobiographies in the past and loved them, but that's only when they pull the curtain back and show us the inner workings of the profession. How are decisions made? How are matches put together? What goes on backstage at a show and what stories don't we know about?

Sadly, Rey doesn't give much in that regard. He had a few short tales to tell about his time in ECW, but that was it. He mostly gave us match recaps, who did what and when and, he did it almost in a way that made it sound like we were supposed to think the matches were "real," so to speak. In many ways, it was almost like the story was being written by the character of Rey Mysterio, the man who comes out on camera and puts on the match. It was like he didn't want to break kayfabe, which is kind of the point of a book like this. We didn't see much of what happened behind the mask, which is pretty ironic given the title.

The few times we did drift backstage, it was bland and kind of predictable. Rey apparently was a saint who never had any beefs with anybody backstage. He says many times that he heard that some people think that Wrestler X was hard to get along with, but he never had any problems with him. Uh huh. Right.

It may sound odd, but what frustrated me the most was how thin the chapter on Eddie Guerrero and Rey's run with the World Heavyweight Championship was. There was very little there.

In the end, this book wasn't all that great. But that doesn't mean I'll stop being one of Rey's fans.

Wordcount Wednesday

I'll keep it short and sweet this week. Work continues on Failstate. As of a moment ago, I have 7,710 words put into it. About 35 pages or so, in five chapters. I've put together some halfway decent turns of phrases (at least, in my grubby little opinion). I was even able to piece together some details that had been eluding me for a while.

But I'm glad that I was able to add 4,476 words this week. That's over half. I wish I could double my word count every week. Could you imagine if wordcounts were exponential? Wow. Sadly, they're not. I'll keep going with the few hundred words here and there until this beast is done.

I do think I need to do some more research, only I'm a little nervous to proceed. I'd love to talk to a police detective about interrogation techniques, but I'm not sure how that conversation could possibly end well. "Hey, Mr. Police Detective, I'd like to pick your brains on how you would conduct an interrogation on a superhero." Yeah.

Well, I've got some time to figure out that bit of dialogue. But in the meantime, onward and upward.

The Sims 3: World Adventures

I've been meaning to do this for a while. Let's talk The Sims 3: World Adventures.

It's not surprising that EA would put out an expansion pack for the Sims. That's where the money is and part of the reason why the Sims remains one of the top-selling game franchises for the past decade or so.

This one is a sort-of retread of previous expansions (namely Vacation and Bon Voyage) and allows your Sims to leave their homes and go on crazy adventures. Unlike the previous iterations, World Adventures includes three "real life" destinations, namely France, China, and Egypt (although I doubt anyone would ever find a place called Champs Les Sims, but I digress).

There's also the requisite new textures, furniture, and so on, plus three new skills for a Sim to learn (photography, "nectar" making, and martial arts. There aren't any new career tracks, which kind of surprised me since those are usually included as well.

Truth be told, there's not a lot to do at these destinations unless you want to go on the titular adventures (more on those in a bit). There's a general market for each new city, plus a few additional features (such as the nectary in France or the martial arts academy in China). You can certainly get to know the local Sims, go fishing, collect rocks and seeds, but that didn't hold a lot of appeal for me. What makes this expansion pack interesting is the tomb raiding.

That's right, each of the three destinations have numerous tombs scattered throughout. You can just plumb their depths right away, but I've found it a bit more satisfying to do the missions that accompany each one. Upon arriving at your destination, you arrive at a "base camp" with a mission bulletin board where local Sims post adventure requests. You can then accept the missions and go out to do them. This is actually an important part of the game, because how long you can stay in country is dependent on your visa level. The only way to increase that level is to earn visa points by doing the missions.

Some missions are easy: collect X number of Y and deliver them to Z. Others require you to go into the various tombs and retrieve certain objects or artifacts.

Ah, the tombs, where the game really shines. Inside the depths of these tombs, you find floor and wall traps that shoot darts or try to fry you. There are huge piles of rubble that need to be cleared away to expose treasure chests and hidden doors. There are relics galore to collect and keep. Some of them are fairly straight forward in terms of raiding. The worst seems to be Abu Simbel in Egypt. I'm pretty sure I botched that one when I cleared it, even though the game says I did fine.

Again, the focus on the expansion pack seems to be the tomb raiding, which is kind of an interesting twist to the franchise. It's not in the usual vein of life simulation and has an almost linear game-play feel to it. But it's kind of a nice change of pace. You certainly don't have to go raiding if you don't want to.

But there are benefits. Not only do you get lots of stuff that can be sold for lots of simoleans, you also can collect "epic" relics that, when gathered into one collection, give your Sim a nice mood bonus.


All that said, there are some serious bugs in the game, enough to really bother me about EA's quality control. I've had some experience with some of them. The game launcher will crash occasionally, although if I wait a few minutes, that problem resolves itself. More problematic is the strange relationship bug.

Let me tell you my story: before the expansion had come out, I had been playing with one family for a while. I really liked this crew and had some plans for where I wanted to take them even after the expansion was added. Small problem: once the expansion was added, I couldn't get their relationships to progress. They could become friends with other Sims, but those friendships couldn't progress to love or marriage or children (which is a small problem when you're trying to keep the game going).

From a quick search on the Sims 3 forums, I discovered this isn't a unique problem. A lot of players have run afoul of this bug. In my case, I was a bit frustrated because when I initially contacted EA about the problem, the tech support guy condescendingly suggested I was playing the game wrong and needed a game strategy guy to figure out what I was doing wrong. Um, no, this isn't my problem, buddy, it's yours.

The last I heard, EA is "working on it," whatever that means. Hopefully a future patch will resolve the issue. I did find a solution: I uninstalled my game and reinstalled everything and the problem seems to have been solved. But I shouldn't have had to do that.

Anyway, it's a fun addition, even with the bugs. Although if EA wants to fix those sometime soon, I certainly wouldn't object.

Catching Fire

I think I've commented on this before. When I'm not enjoying a book, it takes me forever to read it. When I really enjoy a book, it seems like I burn through them like nothing (pun somewhat intended in this case). That's certainly true of Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.

Katniss Everdeen, having survived the Hunger Games, now has to endure the Victory Tour. She must travel to all twelve Districts of Panem and face the families of the tributes who either died or were killed by her in the Games. But the stakes are higher than usual. The way she and Peeta Mellark won the games has started a spark of rebellion against the Capitol. Katniss is told that she has to smother the flames before the whole country catches fire, a task that may be completely out of her control, especially when the next round of the Games begin with a horrifying twist.

I'm pretty sure that I polished this book off in a little more than 24 hours. I simply could not put it down. Collins's story and characters are engaging and vivid. The first person-present point-of-view, while off-putting in the first book, felt completely natural this time around. The description of life in oppressed Panem was fascinating, especially at the decadence of the Capitol.

If there was any part of the story that had me a little upset, it was the fact that Katniss seems to be a bit too clueless for her own good. There were more than a few times when things happened around her and she just glossed over them and didn't pull the threads together to see what should have been obvious. A certain watch, for example. That's all I'm saying on that, but if you read the book or have read the book, you should know what I'm talking about.

That, and to be perfectly honest, I was hoping that at some point, Katniss would resolve the love triangle she's in. It's just not working for me.

That isn't to say I won't be reading the last book in the series. Far from it. As a matter of fact, I checked Amazon today and found out that I can pre-order the third book and lock in the lowest price possible. Right now, the third book is on pre-order for almost half off. I can't imagine the price getting much lower, but I know that even if it does, Amazon will give me the lowest price it lists. So I think I know what I'll be doing this fall: spending one last day in Panem to see what happens to Katniss Everdeen.

The Big Five Oh ... Oh

According to my dashboard, I've just hit a milestone on this blog. This is post #500. Well, for now it is. I've been thinking of going into my backlog and clearing out some of the overgrowth, but I've never gotten around to it, but anyway...

Wow. I'll be honest, when I started this blog, I didn't think that it'd last very long. If you go back and look at the earliest entries (and please don't, just take my word for it), this little corner of cyberspace would very easily live up to its name. Stupid rambling posts by yours truly, never around a central theme. It very well should have imploded like a Viking's fan's Superbowl dreams (Gah! Too early!).

But here we are, five years and five hundred posts later. I suppose I could get all introspective right now and try to come up with some profound insight over how I've changed over the past five years. Five years ago, I was still a pastor in Blue Earth. Five years ago, I hadn't yet gone through the adoption process and become a father. I hadn't attended an ACFW Conference yet, I was still banging away at the same science fiction trilogy that now gathers some dust on my bookshelf.

Truth be told, though, I'm in a bit of a mess right now mentally. So instead of going for philosophy, let's go for the moment.

As of right now, I'm sitting in my den chair, wearing my purple #4 jersey, wondering how much the Saints paid to bribe the refs. Saints fans may disagree with me, but come on, some of those last calls were ridiculous. Go Colts.

Now that that's out of my system, let's talk TV viewing. My current roster of TV shows I follow regularly is holding somewhat steady: Chuck, Heroes, Castle on Mondays. Scrubs and now Human Target on Tuesdays (although don't hold me to the latter, I'm not sure when that's on exactly). Law and Order: SVU on Wednesdays. Dollhouse (for now), Shark Tank, and Law and Order on Fridays. Thank goodness for my hardworking VCR so I can record it and catch up on those shows at my leisure.

I'm reading Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins presently and I'm surprised at how fast I'm plowing through it. Good stuff there.

According to my iTunes 25 Most Played List, I am apparently obsessed with the soundtrack for Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. Weird. I didn't think I'd listened to it that many times. Not that I have recently. I'm also the proud subscriber of about a dozen podcasts, three from How Things Work, the venerable Late Nite Jengajam, the PC Gamer Podcast, and I just recently, I subscribed to Word Like Fire and downloaded all 25 episodes.

I'm still a pastor but I've dabbled with dreams of going for an advanced degree of some sort. I took a somewhat half-serious look at an MFA from Hamline, but got derailed sometime last year.

I've lost more hair in the last five years than I wanted, but those are the breaks.

So that's about it. I have no idea where or when I'll be when post #1,000 comes around. I have no idea what changes might have occurred in my life.

Hopefully by then, the Vikings will have at least made it into the Superbowl. A guy can dream, right?

The Breath of God

So, I guess, lesson learned. Don't expect great books at a liquidation sale. I just now finished the final book I bought at the B. Dalton clearance sale and, unfortunately, it would appear that there was a reason all of those books were sitting around.

I tried to save the best for last. I'm a big fan of Harry Turtledove. Or, at least, I used to be. So when I saw The Breath of God, I figured I couldn't go wrong. Half price, an author I usually (or used to) enjoy.

What I didn't realize at the time was that this was the second or possibly third book in a series. I'm a little miffed with Tor for completely concealing this fact from me. Nowhere on the book itself does it say that this is book two or three of four or whatever. It didn't help looking at the list of other books by Turtledove either since the publisher didn't group said books by series. When I first started reading the book, I assumed it was a stand-alone.

Needless to say, you can imagine my consternation when it became quite clear that I should already know most of the characters. Turtledove went over great chunks of backstory, so much that I realized I had missed at least one book, possibly two. The sheer amount of telling in the opening chapters, while necessary, was also boring. I almost stopped reading the book after the first fifty pages but my Germanic stubbornness kicked in and I decided I would make it through the whole book.

The story itself deals with Count Hamnet Thyssen. Apparently he and some friends have gone further north than anyone ever has, through a Gap in the Glacier, where they've discovered a great nation of people who call themselves the Rulers. The Rulers have great wizards and fight atop riding deer and mammoths. And now that they know the Glacier has the Gap in it, they're bound and determined to add to their territory. First they'll conquer the nomadic Bizogot, and then it's on to the Raumsdalian Empire. Thyssen and company must stop the Rulers, but that won't be easy since Thyssen isn't exactly on friendly terms with the Emperor.

Like I said, I had to force myself to read this whole book. Turtledove's writing was repetitive, so much so that it frustrated me to no end. Lots of pointless bickering, and the characters would resolve things by stating, "Tell me I'm wrong" or "I can't say you're wrong" or some variation thereof.

In short, I wasn't impressed. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it would have helped if I had read the first book or the first two books or however many I missed. But honestly, after slogging through this one, I have no desire to track down those skipped books.

Oh well. On to better things, books for which I paid full price.

Wordcount Wednesday

You know, it's been so long since I've posted an actual wordcount for one of these, I've almost forgotten how it's done.

Kidding, of course. But as I said last week, I finally started my downward spiral into the world of Failstate, a YA superhero novel. I wish I could report that I've made a lot of progress, but I haven't, not nearly as much as I'd like. Part of that is pressure from the "real world." Part of that is laziness on my part (combined with being distracted by our new Wii Fit Plus and the Sims 3: World Adventures).

But a lot of that had to do with my greatest arch-enemy: the blank page.

I hate blank pages. So much pressure to fill them and do so in a way that's good. And it's even worse when the blank page is the first of a new book.

Maybe I'm the only person who faces this tyrant with such fear and trepidation. I've kind of set a goal for myself to always try to have a great first line or a good first scene that really hooks the reader. I mean, we only have so many words before someone would put a book down, right?

Well, with Failstate, I had a problem with the first line. I couldn't think of a good one. I finally had to throw a weak one on the page and start writing. But because the first line was so lackluster, I didn't feel good about the two or three pages I pieced together.

Then, one evening, a better first line came to me. And it helped. The better first line led to a stronger opening, which led to a fun little scene, which led to more fun...

I'm not done with the first chapter yet (close, but my bed is calling to me with its siren-song), and I'm a little worried about that. I'm on page 13 and I was hoping to have the first chapter be 15 pages or less so I could have an easy entry for ACFW's Genesis Contest. Oh well, maybe I'll lose some bloat when I rewrite the chapter in a few weeks.

Anyway, on to the report. As of right now, I have put 3,234 words on the page. Not too shabby for about half a week's work.

But I know it could have been better. So please, feel free to leave somewhat disparaging remarks for me. I could use the motivation.

Battles of the Bible

In the interest of fairness, I couldn't make it through the whole thing of this book. So these are my impressions based on reading half of it.

When I saw Battles of the Bible at the now infamous clearance sale at B. Dalton, I thought it might be an interesting read. It might supplement what I already knew. Maybe.

Sadly, the editors did a lousy job on this one. Weird misspellings here and there, plus bizarre choices for the artwork for the chapters. For example, in a chapter on King David, we had a picture of Samson being blinded. In a chapter about King Ahab, we had a picture of Solomon preparing to split the baby in two. Say it with me: "Huh?"

Maybe it's okay if you don't know any better, I don't know. At least I got it for cheap.

Something I should have put on my list...

Not that I need a new robe, but how cool is this? A Jedi bathrobe! My problem, of course, would be that I'd want to wear it out of the house.

Wordcount Wednesday

Over the past week, I've been working on the preliminary groundwork for Failstate. I've written a three or four page synopsis, I've worked out how the story will probably flow.

So I think I'm ready.

Hopefully starting tomorrow, I'll start the new manuscript. My target goal is somewhere between 65,000 and 80,000 words. I honestly don't know how long this one will go. I guess we'll see.

I'm also hoping to have this one done by the end of February. We'll see about that one too.

Wish me luck.

No words ... should have sent a poet

I'm in awe. And probably not in a good way.

The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition

Every Christmas, I usually wind up getting at least one or two "double gifts." You know, when two people wind up giving you the exact same thing. This year, though, I wound up with a rare triple, all of them being The Force Unleashed. My brother and brother-in-law both gave me a copy for our new Wii, and my parents gave me the Ultimate Sith Edition for the PC. After doing some limited research and after a little bit of thought, I returned the two Wii copies and kept the PC edition.

At the time, I thought I was making the right decision because the PC edition contained three extra levels the Wii wouldn't have. Now that I've played through the original story and the extra levels, I realize that I probably made a mistake.

So let's break it down. Story first. The story of The Force Unleashed is set in the "missing years" between the two trilogies. It turns out that Darth Vader has taken an apprentice a little early, keeping him secret from the Emperor. He sends out his apprentice to mop up some Jedi stragglers who somehow survived Order 66. But then everything goes downhill as the Emperor learns of the apprentice's existence. Now Darth Vader sends out his apprentice on a new mission, one that will ... well, I'm not sure how to explain it without giving away some massive spoilers.

Anyway, in terms of story, the game was okay, I guess. It did raise my eyebrows once or twice when I realized what the implications of the story would be for the larger Star Wars story. As for the story of the extra levels, one is a tacked-on something or other about the apprentice raiding the ruins of the Jedi temple on Coruscant to learn more about his father. The other two promised to be more interesting: a retelling of two episodes from the original trilogy with a slight counterfactual twist. What would have happened if the Dark Side ending of the game was canonical? What if the Apprentice was the one on Tatooine and Hoth in Episodes IV and V?

As intriguing as "A Fragile Hope" and "Wrath of the Empire" (the names of said expansions) were on paper, the stories of both were so-so. They were what they were and that's about it. So in terms of story, the Ultimate Sith Edition fell kind of flat.

On to gameplay, and this is where the game really suffered. Part of it was issues with my computer. I had thought that my rig could handle the game and, for the most part, it did. But there were sections of the game where the framerate crawled along painfully, especially in wide-open spaces or areas where there was a lot of background activity. So, for example, Darth Vader raiding the Wookie village on Kashyyyk was particularly slow. I also experienced a few glitches with my sound card that struck at inopportune times.

But I still noticed graphical and sound glitches throughout the game that I'm pretty sure weren't the fault of my computer. There were a few times where the dialogue volume dropped so much that the music and ambient noises overwhelmed them. This happened so often I finally had to turn on subtitles just so I could know what was being said.

There were also weird graphics issues every now and then as well. For example, when I was playing the Hoth level in the final boss battle, the Apprentice's armor disappeared on one arm. Or, to put it more specifically, his arm disappeared but his glove did not, so it looked like he was wearing some sort of stealth suit. It was funny, but kind of annoying.

Weird glitches aside, I was a bit frustrated with gameplay overall because this was obviously a console import, and a bad one at that. It seemed pretty clear to me that the developers didn't put a lot of effort translating the game from the other consoles to PC. There were times I was struck by how lazy some of the changes were, especially when there wasn't a lot of explanation for what I was supposed to be doing. For example, when you're in a boss battle with another Force user, the game will prompt you how to counter certain moves. For the most part, what the game prompted me to do made sense. But there was one, some sort of spinning wheel that had something to do with Force lightning, that I couldn't figure out for the life of me and the game never helped.

But what really soured me on this game was what should have been the coolest sequence: ripping a Star Destroyer out of orbit.

I don't consider this to be a spoiler since they hinted at this part of the game in the original trailers. I was looking forward to this sequence when I first started playing but when I was in the middle of it, I was so angry I almost stopped playing the game entirely.

Simply put, this was ridiculously overcomplicated. You have to deal with a flight of TIE Fighters. Then you have to maneuver the Star Destroyer into a very specific position before you can pull the thing down.

On paper, it sounds like an easy task, but even on the "apprentice" difficulty (the easiest; yes, I know, I'm a wimp), it took me over an hour to do this. First of all, there's all sorts of garbage floating through the area that theoretically could have been used to take down the TIEs, but proved almost impossible to utilize in that way. Targeting the TIEs themselves proved to be ridiculously tricky because you had to be able to face just the right way to catch them or hit them, something that was difficult to pull off because of the way the camera locked itself for the sequence. While you deal with the TIEs, the Star Destroyer moves out of alignment, meaning you have to struggle to get it back into the correct position, by which time the next wave would catch up to you.

I suffered through multiple attempts before I finally managed to rip the stupid ship down, but by the time I was done, I was so angry and frustrated, I shut off the game and didn't come back to it for two days. I doubt that's what a game developer would want. Shouldn't I have been jazzed and ready for more after doing something like that?

Besides, there's a problem of logic with this sequence. Why do I have to carefully position the Star Destroyer first? It's not like I'm trying to guide it in for a soft landing. I want the thing to crash and crash hard. So why not just have me pull the sucker down any which way?

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest...

The upshot is that in the end, I was foolish to trade in the Wii versions. The extra levels didn't add that much to the overall gaming experience. The weird issues I had with the game on my PC probably wouldn't have been present on the Wii. And with the Wii, I would have had the option of lightsaber duels.

I guess my final opinion, for anyone who stuck around long enough to read it, is that if you're facing a similar choice as I did, go for the Wii and skip the PC version. Just not worth it.

Chuck Season 3

Chuck is back! After a near brush with cancellation, staved off by Subway sandwiches, our favorite Nerd Herder is back. I rejoiced when I heard the news that we would get at least another season to watch Chuck do his thing.

But at the same time, I was a bit worried. Given the "upgrade" Chuck received at the end of season 2, how could the formula work? What would happen between Chuck and Sarah? How would the Bartowski team function with Chuck suddenly able to out-perform everyone? And sure, I had read on-line reports that everything would be cool but I had to see it for myself.

So last night, we had the two hour extravaganza, a kick-off for Chuck's return. And I honestly didn't know what to expect. What we got were the first two episodes of the new season back-to-back. Huh.

In some ways, I expected bigger. Something a bit more epic. Something to rival the craziness of the last few episodes of season 2 (at the very least, a Jeffster performance of some kind). But what I saw was good. The team is back in business, Chuck is getting used to the upgrade, and the dynamic is still working. I particularly loved the scene with Emmett where Chuck had to restrain himself. Great, great stuff (leading up to a scene that seemed more in line with a certain show on a different network on Friday nights, but more on that in a bit).

Now I'm cautiously optimistic. The next few weeks will tell us if the show can keep going. And recent news suggests to me that NBC won't be quite so quick to cancel in the future (I mean, there's a lot of hours to fill in prime time, fellas. Just saying). So I guess I'll just strap in for some great nerd fun.

Oh, and I know I haven't said much about Dollhouse in a while. I suppose that I didn't want to admit that the show would really end. And, given the sporadic nature of its schedule this season, it was hard to remember to blog. But given the huge twist this past week and the fact that there are only two episodes left, well ... I'm thinking a postmortem might be in order by the end of the month.

The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF

I'm beginning to see why so many of the books I got for half-off were still available. I spent the past week or so trying to work my way through The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF. According to the editor's introduction, this collection of science fiction short stories was supposed to recapture the sense of wonder that early science fiction inspired in its readers.

It succeeded ... sort of. It inspired wonder. I wondered why I bought this. Lots of stories, some of them mildly interesting, but none really evoking any true sense of awe in me. Well, a little, but not for the right reasons. For example: apparently you can only travel safely through hyperspace if you're Buddhist and have taken LSD. At least a quarter of the stories seemed obsessed with sex in some way, shape or form. And I'd be willing to bet that two of the authors are closet furries.

Oh well. Nothing ventured, right?

Wordcount Wednesday

Well, no actual progress on Failstate yet. I haven't written a word of the actual book. I'm still hip-deep in putting together the plot and figuring out all the characters. I'm hoping I can start writing soon, but who knows?

But I did have a fun experience tonight. Failstate, the main character, began talking to another character. I've heard that this sort of thing happens to other writers but it rarely happens to me. Not like this. And I was particularly excited because, for the life of me, I've been having the hardest time figuring these two out, how they all fit together, how it all would come together with the main plot.

Now I know.

Slight problem, though. This all happened while I was supposed to be teaching my confirmation class about confession and absolution. Yeah. It's a bit awkward when you have two characters discussing alien abductions and injection wounds while trying to wrangle about a dozen junior high students. Loads of fun, let me tell you. I eventually had to tell both of them to shut up. They weren't happy and only wound up talking louder.

Being a writer is hard.

So true, so true...

Wordcount Wednesday

I'm still in the "mulching" process for Failstate. More and more pieces are coming together, but thanks to an extended Christmas break, I haven't done much more formal and official work on it.

But I did want to make this post to encourage all of you to head over to the Anomaly and cast your vote in Marcher Lord Select. I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating because this is the final round and I'm still in it! So if you are so inclined, please head to the Premise Contest ballot and cast your vote for Numb. And since you can vote for two, please consider voting for Dying for Dragons. It's by a friend of mine and, I think, one of the best of the bunch.

The Externally Focused Church

I first heard about The Externally Focused Church at a clergy meeting and was intrigued by the idea of congregations that are focused not on themselves, but on the communities surrounding them. So I tracked down a copy and, in my down-time post-Christmas, I took a swing through this text.

It was eye-opening to say the least. Authors Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson make the very persuasive argument that the Church has to get out of her four walls and into the community, acting as servants that do as well as tell. That means finding and targeting specific needs in the community around them, working to meet those needs, motivating members to serve in the community, and engaging people where they are, not necessarily to "win them for Christ" (although that would be a great thing should it happen) but to serve them out of Christian love and devotion because that's what God seeks in His people.

To put it bluntly, it's given me a lot to think about. And that's always a good thing.

The Hunger Games

Imagine a world where the continent we call North America has been divided up into thirteen districts. Thanks to a failed revolution, one of the thirteen have been destroyed. The remaining twelve must send two "tributes" to The Hunger Games, a demented reality show with tremendous stakes. Only one tribute can win. The winner receives special dispensations for his or her District for the year, including food, prestige, and bragging rights. The losers are all dead.

That's the world of Katniss Everdeen, a young woman from District Twelve. She's a poacher from a poor and derided District; they haven't produced a Hunger Games winner in thirty years. When the Hunger Games roll around when she's sixteen, she winds up the female tribute for District Twelve. Now she's thrust into more than just a deadly reality show competition. She has to navigate both the tricky waters of politics within the cruel nation of Panem and the even more dangerous seas of her own heart.

Okay, that last sentence was a bit over the top, but holy cow! I loved this book. Collins creates a vibrant and engaging world, one that I can sadly believe could come to pass. I mean, look at how ridiculous some reality TV shows have already gotten. It's not long before we'll see people duking it out to the death.

Katniss is a fascinating heroine. She's wily, resourceful, and more than just a little charismatic. In some ways, the plot is a little predictable; I was able to call most of the major twists as they came. But I didn't care because I was so invested in seeing Katniss succeed. There were a few times when I wanted to smack her for being dim, but I figure that was the point at times.

Anyway, great book, and I can't wait to read the next one.

The Psychology of Superheroes

I honestly thought this book would turn out to be more interesting than it was. The Psychology of Superheroes, a collection of essays written by psychologists about ... well, you get the idea ... purports to put the heroes on the couch, crack open their minds, and see what makes them tick.

Sadly, that's not always what happened. More often than not, it seemed like the essay authors had a personal pet theory to promote and glommed them on to whatever superhero seemed to fit the bill best. Oh, there were a few essays that sparked my interest, but by and large, I wound up skimming the essays looking for those sparks. Usually I wound up disappointed.

Oh well.

Trinity Volume 1

I actually heard about this book while I was doing my research on Failstate. Someone (and I don't remember who) pointed out that the DC universe has a trinity of heroes in Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman and that someone finally decided to do a story acknowledging that. So when I spotted Trinity Volume One at my local soon-to-be-closed B. Dalton (so I could get it for half off), I snatched it up.

Basically the plot boils down to this: bad guys are trying to take over the world using a magic spell that somehow involves Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Tarot cards feature heavily in the plot for unknown reasons. And just about every DC superhero is involved in some way, shape, or form. Oh, and so is some alternate universe where everyone is evil.

In all seriousness, I had fun reading this one. Granted, I don't know all the backstory in it, which is okay. I'm somewhat conversant in names, identities, powers, and so on thanks to the various animated series put out by Warner Brothers and DC. I know, that's probably heresy to fanboys. Well, deal with it. I still didn't know who everyone was, but that's okay, it didn't really matter in the long run.

The only thing that really torked me off is the fact that they kept making references to trinities of different sorts (mostly steeped in the occult and tarot) and they missed, well, the obvious one. You know? Big Three? One of them has a supposed birthday coming up in a day or two? grumble grumble grumble. I know from my reading that both DC and Marvel tend to avoid Christianity (for the most part; I know about Nightcrawler), but come on.

My only other complaint is one of my own making. I had thought that this was a self-contained volume. Nope. A quick check reveals there are two more volumes out there for me to read. And I doubt I'll be able to get them at a ridiculously discounted price. Better start saving my pennies now.

Star Wars Tales Volume 3

So I think I may be starved for some light fiction reading or something. I polished off another collection of comic stories, namely Star Wars Tales Volume 3.

I've got a small collection of these books sitting on my bookshelf. They're mostly good. Some of the stories they contain are pretty out there (an honest to goodness Star Wars/Indiana Jones crossover is by far the strangest). Since I tend to collect as much of a series as I can, I jumped at the chance to buy Volume 3.

All in all, it was about average. There was no overall theme to this one (unlike other volumes), just a scattershot selection of Star Wars tales. By far the best one is the first in the book, a fight that pits Darth Vader against Darth Maul. The rest are hit or miss, mostly misses, so far as I'm concerned.

Oh well. It's not a loss necessarily. I mean, Vader vs. Maul is still pretty cool.

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

As part of a blow-out liquidation sale at a local B. Dalton, I snagged a copy of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? I justified this purchase by claiming it's research for my next novel. Ahem.

Anyway, let's get to it. The story was written by Alan Moore, the genius behind Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and other classics. According to the introduction, this was written about the time of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. And while I have some inkling of what that is, said inkling is not enough to make me really care.

So basically, this story came about when an outgoing editor at DC decided to "wrap up" the story of Superman. How would the Man of Tomorrow's career wind down? Who would ultimately stop the Man of Steel? In the first two parts, we see how Moore tells the tale. Superman faces down some of his greatest enemies, all told via an interview with Lois Lane ... er, Elliot, as the case may be.

Much to my surprise, the story wasn't all that fun. I guess I expected more from Moore. Part of the problem is that you have to be pretty familiar with the Superman mythos and continuity, especially from about the '50s through the early '80s. I, once again, have a little more than an inkling of understanding of said mythos thanks to an anthology book I used to check out regularly from my local library when growing up. But you had better know, for instance, that in the late '70s, early '80s (or thereabouts) that Clark Kent became a television reporter, and so on, or parts of this plot won't make any sense. While the final twist at the end of the story was a nice one, it ultimately left me indifferent.

The second story in the book was a crossover between Superman and Swamp Thing. This one too left me a bit disappointed. It didn't strike me as a big deal, more like it was filler.

The final story was pretty good, entitled For the Man Who Has Everything. Interesting story, fun to read. The small problem is, this story was adapted into an episode of The Justice League, so I pretty much knew what was going to happen. It was interesting to see how closely the TV show hewed to the source material. And seeing Jason Todd in action as Robin was certainly instructive. I can't say I'd want to see him blown up by the Joker, but I could understand why, in large doses, some people might.

So there you go. Not the best, not the worst. An interesting read nonetheless.

Holy Superheroes!

So I'm continuing my research for Failstate, and that brought me to Holy Superheroes! by Greg Garrett. In the interest of fairness, the Amazon link I've provided is to the new expanded edition of the book. I read a borrowed copy of the original edition. That being said, I'm not about to rush out and buy a new copy because in the end, this book left me largely disappointed.

I was actually kind of excited to read this one. Seeing as Failstate is going to be a superhero story with some major Christian underpinnings, I really wanted to see what Garrett had to say about how faith and comics intersect. The book was, granted, a bit on the light side, much lighter than some of the other books I've read on the subject, but I was hoping it'd be chock full of theological goodness.

I came away disappointed. The book is more pop psychology than theology. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted more than Christ. Garrett even quoted himself (in a previous book on the Matrix trilogy) more than Christ. That should pretty much tell you what you need to know. But to get into more specifics, each chapter was superficial and shallow in how it treated its subject. Ultimately Garrett's book was more about social justice without any sort of grace-based foundation.

I might be too harsh on this, I don't know, but in the end, I wasn't impressed with Garrett's work.

Superheroes and Philosophy

Faster than an ontological imperative. More powerful than an existential quandary! ... um, okay, I can't actually keep that up. As part of my superhero reading splurge, I finished off Superheroes and Philosophy, a collection of essays that examines superheroes and how they intersect with philosophical ideas and ideals.

It's an okay book. It's relatively accessible, never delving too deeply into philosophical teaching. I could remember a lot of what they were discussing from the few philosophy classes I took in college. I chuckled when I realized that two of the authors reference the Ring of Gyges myth from Plato in their essays. That's always been one of my favorites. Even wrote an X-Files spec script based on it back in the day. But that's a different story for another day.

The most fascinating issues revolved around whether or not superheroes should use their powers for good. I also really appreciated Tom Morris's essay about Daredevil and his possible Catholic faith. There were fun issues about whether or not the Hulk and Bruce Banner are the same person. All in all, not a bad book.

Hitler finds out they cancelled "Dollhouse"

So yeah, Fox did it again a while back and decided that Dollhouse would only get half a season this time around and then it's done. Who woulda thought that Adolf Hitler would sum up my feelings on this news so well?

Wordcount Wednesday

Look! On the web! On this blog! It's a Wordcount Wednesday! Been a while since I've done one of these, huh?

I could claim that it's not my fault. I've been distracted by something vaguely writing related (more on that in a bit). In reality, though, I've been putting off writing for supposedly good reasons and some really stupid ones.

Stupid ones first: computer games. I don't know why, but I've been sucked into computer games lately, more so than usual. I don't know why that is. But I've been playing Tropico 3 a lot lately and just a day or two ago, I fired up The Sims 3 again and created a real dirtbag of a Sim. I've been having fun making him as much of a jerk as possible. But those aren't good reasons to not write, and I know it.

I've also been on something of an MST3K binge lately. I don't know why, but I can't get enough of movies with theater seats in front of them. Huh. Can't explain it.

The good reasons are the usual: the job/ministry, family, friends, so on and so forth.

But never fear, intrepid blog-reader! I'm starting to get myself into the proper writing frame of mind. I'm sussing out ideas for a novel that I'm dubbing Failstate. That's the working title, obviously. It could change as I work. And Failstate is the reason why I engaged in a bit of superhero-themed writing (and why I have the clown wearing his underwear on the outside). Failstate is going to be a novel about superheroes.

I have no idea if I can pull this off. I'm already having trouble steering clear of "done before" concepts (I started outlining one idea to Jill tonight. She gave me a surprised look and said, "Incredibles?" And I realized that yes, I had basically ripped off the first ten minutes).

I'm not quite ready to start writing yet. I'm still doing some low-level research (i.e. reading some books about superheroes. Such as The Physics of Superheroes and Superheroes and Philosophy) and tonight, I sent out some e-mails to law professors to try to nail down some of the legalities surrounding vigilante activity.

Either tonight or maybe tomorrow, I'm hoping to fire up Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Pro software and start putting together an outline. I don't know if I'm quite ready for that yet, but we'll see what I can come up with as I work.

So yeah. Some writing stuff going on here.

But like I said, my attention has been somewhat distracted lately. As my regular readers (all none of you) are probably aware, I'm taking part in Marcher Lord Select. Well, it's round three and I'm still in the Premise Contest with Numb. So I have two questions for you:

Have you voted yet? And if not, why not?

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

Why is it I always find out about these things after 9 million other people have already seen it? Oh well. LOVE IT!

Why I'm wary of Twilight

More than a year ago, I subjected myself to Twilight and was left feeling a little empty inside. But there was one thought that kept surfacing, reiterated by other people and echoing in my own mind. How healthy is the relationship between Edward and Bella? A lot of people saw glimmers of what could be an abusive relationship. That, in and of itself, isn't necessarily bad. If the purpose is to shine a light on the abuse so young women will avoid similar situations, fantastic.

But that's not the point of the Twilight books. This relationship is "sooooo romantic." Edward is "soooooo dreamy." Rather than warn the readers, "There really are jerks who wish to destroy their partners," young women might be learning that destructive relationships are the pinnacle of romance.

Am I overreacting? Maybe. I haven't read any of the other books past Twilight and I haven't seen any of the movies, so it's hard to judge for myself.

But I'm not the only one concerned. Through a round-about clicking of links, I found this post that elucidates my concerns so much better, by someone who has seen the latest movie:

What Do You See In Him Again?

Just a warning: this rant has a few profanities in it, so be forewarned. But keep this number in mind: 15.

Why is this held up as so great a romance again?

Scrubs reboot

So here we go, the little show that could. Scrubs is back with a somewhat major retooling. Gone is the old hospital, gone is the Janitor. Is Ted still with us? I guess we'll find out.

Coming in are a new crop of characters. We have "new JD" Lucy. Some kid named Cole whose parents bought the hospital. A med school flunky who's back for more. Plus an Australian extra.

Carrying over: JD (for now) and Turk. Dr. Cox and Dr. Kelso. The Todd is still kicking. And Denise "Jo" Mahoney survived the culling of the old cast.

I've loved Scrubs since almost the beginning and I'm not sure what to make of this. There were some genuine laugh-out-loud moments which is always good. Dr. Cox was his usual snarky awesomeness. I mean, he's always good for a tirade or two and a new crop of semi-incompetent med students will be great fodder for Cox.

But I'm not sure about this. What I'm worried about is if the new characters will be able to keep up the momentum. Lucy, for example, the female JD clone. Her "fantasies" haven't been as wacky as JD's, which is a good thing. If she had been total random weirdness, I'd be extremely frustrated. She seems flawed yet hopeful enough that she might be able to carry her part of the show.

I worry about the others. Rich-kid Cole, for instance. If he gets broken down, what will we find underneath? Is he just another Elliot in the making, soon to be cut off from his rich parents and have to make it on his own? How about what's-his-name, Dr. Cox's new protege? I'm intrigued about what happened to him his first go-through in med school, but once that mystery is revealed, what else will be there?

We'll have to see. Call me cautiously optimistic.

The Physics of Superheroes

This one made my brain hurt but in a good way. I stretched mental muscles that I haven't used since high school.

I finished reading The Physics of Superheroes by Dr. James Kakalios last night. Dr. Kakalios endeavors to teach basic physics principles via illustrations from comic books. I first heard of Dr. Kakalios because of his connection to the abysmal Watchmen movie. He apparently was a technical consultant (or something like that) who advised the movie folks on their science. I want to make this clear: I do not blame Dr. Kakalios in any way for the giant mess Watchmen became.

This book is based on a freshman seminar that Dr. Kakalios teaches at the University of Minnesota. I found one of the statements he made at the beginning of the book hilarious. He opined that many of his students didn't like science classes because they weren't sure how they would apply what they were learning to the real world. He goes on to note, "Interestingly enough, whenever I cite examples from superhero comic books in a lecture, my students never wonder when they will use this information in their 'real life.' Apparently they all have plans, post-graduation, that involve protecting the City from all threats while wearing spandex."

For the most part, Dr. Kakalios kept all of the principles and ideas accessible, using basic algebra to explain the math behind the ideas. There were plenty of times when the discussion started to scrape my scalp, but for the most part, I think I tracked with him. And the comic book examples did indeed help. For example, Dr. Kakalios was able to suss out the planet Krypton's gravity based on how high Superman could jump (before he learned to fly). He also figured out how much food the Flash might have to eat. He posited theories on how Kitty Pryde's power works. And he proved that Spiderman is guilty of manslaughter.

Don't beleive me? Watch the video and he'll explain it for himself:



I'm not sure if this helped me in my upcoming writing project, but it was a great read and worth the time.